Migration of people wanting a better life is nothing new
I'm sitting on a bus looking into the exhausted eyes of a young Albanian couple from Kosovo. Their faces are taut, and their smiles uneasy.
The sun is hot through the windows. I offer to share my bottle of water, but they're nervous about accepting it. They're bewildered.
Kadrush says his house was burned by the Serbs. His wife Shkendie says she knew the victims of a massacre. They've just made it to Britain and claimed asylum.
I hand them my mobile phone and watch Shkendie stifling a sob at the sound of her sister's voice back home.
Epic journey
They had crossed Europe hidden inside a secret compartment in a truck. Their food lasted four days but the journey went on for seven. When the rhythm of the truck changed from the bumps of a motorway to the swell of the Channel, they knew England was close.
Being caught by the police was a relief. Now they wait to see if they can stay. "Are you scared?" I ask. "No," they say. "We're happy to be here, alive."
As we talk I feel that age-old tingling on the neck. I realise that what I'm witnessing, with this edgy young couple wide-eyed in a new land, is a part of the history of my own family.
Only two generations ago my father's parents were in exactly the same position. The year was 1913 and they were among hundreds of Jews from Russia shuffling down a gangplank and onto British soil at Tilbury.
For them it was salvation. They wouldn't have had the new rucksacks of the Albanian couple. Instead they carried a cardboard suitcase and a large neatly tied bundle of eiderdowns - bedding was too valuable to leave behind.
And tucked away was my uncle, then a baby of three months, smuggled in a less sophisticated version of the secret compartment used by the Albanians.
Desperate to leave
The luggage was different but the motives may have been similar. Life in Russia a century back must have been appalling.
There were waves of emigration - to London, Paris or, along with millions from Ireland and Italy, to Manhattan.
As I listen now to the couple from Kosovo, or hear the stories of Iraqis fleeing from Saddam, I try to picture what my grandparents went through faced with the same threat, the same lack of hope.
History has seen tides of people crossing borders and oceans, but how desperate must my grandparents have been, a young David Shukman and my grandmother Maria, to take that fateful step of fleeing?
At some point, at their home in Crimea, amid the poverty and uncertainty, there must have been a decisive moment, perhaps with others over a meal or stepping outside their shared flat away from the in-laws to weigh the pros and cons.
There were enough roubles for the tickets, but would that leave anything for food? My grandfather had a Russian army pass, but would it do? He had an aunt in London but would he find her? There wouldn't have been a BBC man offering a mobile phone.
I assume there were plenty of friends and family telling them not to be crazy, that the risks are huge. Many on the move now must have heard the same warnings.
Even more, in refugee camps and villages and cities around the world, must be agonising right now over whether to risk everything or stay put.
Into the unknown
There's no family record of my grandparents' journey. We assume they took trains across Russia to the Baltic Sea. There must have been bribes - to get an exit stamp, to board the ship, to keep the harbour guards at bay.
At sea the poorest passengers had to cook for themselves on deck. Tilbury, though unknown, would have been a welcome sight.
As refugees, my grandparents were registered as aliens, allowed to work but not allowed to vote - outcasts, but left to live in peace.
Before World War I, Britain took in over 200,000 Russian Jews. I wonder whether they would have got in now.
If they couldn't prove their lives were in danger, they would be refused asylum. If the Home Office were to decide they were only here to avoid poverty, they would be sent back. My grandfather had no money to his name and his trade as a tailor was hardly a privileged one.
The balance between acceptance and refusal is so fine, yet each decision about who can stay and who can't shapes generations to come - like my own.
My grandparents did get in, and their grandchildren are leading lives they only dreamed of. No wonder so many try.